Book excerpt: Bestselling author David Dalton goes in seach of the real Bob Dylan in an electrifying biography that puts all the others in the shade. As an artist Bob Dylan has been a major force for half a century. As a musical influence he is without equal. Yet as a man he has always acted like an outlaw on the run, constantly seeking to cover his tracks by confounding investigators with a dizzying array of aliases, impersonations, tall tales and downright lies. David Dalton presents Dylan's extraordinary life in such a way that his subject's techniques for hiding in full sight are gradually exposed for what they are, Despite the changing images, the spiritual body swerves, the manipulative nature and the occasionally baffling lurches between making sublime music and self-indulgent whimsy, the real Bob Dylan has never been more visible. Among the eyewitnesses cited are Marianne Faithful, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Larry 'Ratso' Sloman, Nat Hentoff, Suze Rotolo and many more. Yet in the end it is Dalton's impressive ability to find revealing patterns in Dylan's multiple disguises that reveals more than we ever expected to learn about the real man behind the Dylan legend.